Behemoth - Opvs Contra Natvram (2022)

Every year Behemoth release a new album is a good year. Sounds fanboyish, but... wait, I'm having a déjà vu. I said the same thing about Dir en grey, didn't I? Well, look, I'm a simple man. Anyway, in 2014, 2018 and now 2022 both of these two bands I generally consider among the top three best bands released new albums. The reason I'm saying this is that the 2018 Behemoth album, I Loved You At Your Darkest, was honestly disappointing. It's not bad, but it's for the most part very formulaic and just feels like they'd lost their spark. But with Opvs Contra Natvram, they dispel any suspicion of that.

SITE

01. Post-God Nirvana
02. Malaria Vvlgata
03. The Deathless Sun
04. Ov My Herculean Exile
05. Neo-Spartacvs
06. Disinheritance
07. Off to War!
08. Once Upon a Pale Horse
09. Thy Becoming Eternal
10. Versvs Christvs

The first song, Post-God Nirvana, is cool and has interesting sounds going on, but it is basically just an intro track that could've easily been one minute long. That said, I do think it's good that it's a "full song" because it's allowed to breathe; if it was shorter, it'd feel unnecessary. It definitely sets the atmosphere for the rest of the album. What I find remarkable is that on first listen, its ambiguity kept me on the fence between "oh no, this album will be even blander than ILYAYD" and "oh yeah, this album will kick even more ass than The Satanist" when neither expectation turned out correct.

In some ways, it could be said that this album is even better than The Satanist; in terms of the number of great songs, the two are practically tied. As an album this one feels more consistently fleshed-out and flows better. On the other hand, it doesn't really have any songs that made me think "instant classic" like Ben Sahar, O Father O Satan O Sun! and the title track of The Satanist. The Deathless Sun, Ov My Herculean Exile, Neo-Spartacvs and Once Upon a Pale Horse did immediately stand out on the same level as Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel and Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer, though.

The reason I'm only focusing on comparing this album with The Satanist and not earlier albums is that I'd thought they began to undergo severe boomerification after The Satanist. On some level, Evangelion will always be their one album I consider the best and the album they peaked with since, well, every song on that album was an instant classic; I know for me nostalgia plays a part since it was the first album they released after I got into them, but using nostalgia as a subjective criterion for music enjoyment isn't bad. A lot of people think their older stuff is better, but I'll commit heresy and disagree. Yeah, their old stuff is great for what it is, but how I see (or hear) it, they gradually became the Behemoth they are now and matured a lot from The Apostasy to Evangelion, and then again from Evangelion to The Satanist. If I tried to compare this album with Evangelion, let alone anything before that, it'd be like comparing apples to oranges. If all of their albums had a ton of internal variety, then it'd make more sense... if that makes sense.

I have a bad habit of focusing too much on (the negative aspects of the) mixing and mastering when reviewing albums, but in this case I'll just mention that I wish this album's mastering was a little bit louder and "crispier"; not "dirtier" because imho the relative "cleanliness" works better with Behemoth's music, but this does lack a bit of "bite".

Every song from The Deathless Sun to Once Upon a Pale Horse is really solid, and their order is perfect. So, in other words, for most of its duration, this album feels like "this is an album" and not just "these are songs".

I like the flanger in Off to War! even if the rest of that song almost feels like a filler track. It's a good song, but without the flanger effect, it'd honestly be forgettable.

Thy Becoming Eternal is a good song, but at least so far I've found it disturbingly forgettable. Every time I listen to this album, it's like that song is just something that happens between Once Upon a Pale Horse and Versvs Christvs. It's not a bad song at all, maybe it's just its placement between those two highly memorable songs that makes it forgettable.

The first time, the intro of Versvs Christvs caught me off guard, as I'm sure it did a lot of listeners. In hindsight there's no real reason why it should have, but it doesn't feel like a Behemoth song with the moody piano and Nergal singing softly in a breathy whispery tone. It is a breath of fresh air, and the way it follows Thy Becoming Eternal makes it feel like cold air the first time, like "wait, what's going on?" before you get acclimated. By the time you do get acclimated, it's back to your regularly scheduled programming and the intro feels like a fever dream that you almost doubt even happened... until it happens again, this time not feeling out of place. In a way, they saved the best for last; it's perfect as the last song, it'd sound totally out of place anywhere else on the album, but... I don't know, it ends pretty abruptly, like it should have an epic finale that really blows your mind.

Enjoyability: 9/10
Relistenability: 8/10
Memorability: 7/10
Coherence: 7/10
Flow: 8/10
Originality: 6/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: Behemoth are still a behemoth.

Dir en grey - Phalaris (2022)

The second I heard the limited edition would have new versions of mazohyst of decadence and ain't afraid to die, I had to preorder it immediately... but anyway, 2022 is now certified a good year because a new Dir en grey album was released.

SITE

01. Schadenfreude
02. 朧
03. The Perfume of Sins
04. 13
05. 現、忘我を喰らう
06. 落ちた事のある空
07. 盲愛に処す
08. 響
09. Eddie
10. 御伽
11. カムイ
(12. mazohyst of decadence)
(13. ain't afraid to die)

The first time I listened to this album, I kept thinking "oh no, this is mixed and mastered even worse than The Insulated World!? How is that possible?!" and struggled to clearly hear anything other than the bass. Don't get me wrong, I love loud bass, but there comes a point where a balance is lost, and instead of making the music heavier, it makes it less heavy. I still feel like The Insulated World is toeing the line, and on Phalaris the line has clearly been crossed. After second listen, it became possible to focus on other things as well, and on every subsequent listen it has been less distracting. Of course, it has to be noted that Toshiya is a great bassist, but still...

The two songs that immediately stood out to me on first listen were The Perfume of Sins and 御伽.

Schadenfreude is a great song, with some really intense and heavy parts, a beautiful chorus, a lush guitar solo, atmospheric breaks... it almost feels like a culmination of their discography, and reaches heights of epicness that most bands can only dream of putting together. It's also a great opening track because it contains basically all the elements that later songs contain, but still leaves enough room for surprises. It's also ten minutes long, and manages to feel like only half that. It may be the overall best song on the album, all things considered. However, because it's the first and followed by 朧 and The Perfume of Sins, it's unfortunately forgettable within the context of the album.

朧 is a very memorable and beautiful song, but feels a little out of place on this album, especially between Schadenfreude and The Perfume of Sins. The first time I heard it, when it was released as a single, I had conflicted feelings about it; at first it just felt like a "Ranunculus №2" or a "2020s' 蛍火", in other words immediately enjoyable and goosebumps-inducing, but like something I'd heard a thousand times. The more I listened to it, the clearer it became that thinking of it that way is wrong. I mean, it's not wrong to note whatever similarities to those two songs, but thinking of it as "unoriginal" is expecting Dir en grey to be another band; they have their distinct sound, as varied as it is, and this kind of song is just a part of that sound.

The Perfume of Sins really showcases Shinya's drumming skills, having blast beats, interesting rhythms and delicious fills throughout. It's a very groovy song, with clenching and dredging riffs. It even has strings and might be accurate to call "symphonic metal", at least at parts, which shouldn't be unexpected since they've done symphonic versions of their songs before and have sometimes had strings in some songs since their early days, but it's definitely a nice touch that adds character to this song and at least I was caught off guard by it the first time. This song is like a train coming at you, but instead of getting out of the way, you want to get run over to experience the sheer power. That's what this song makes me think.

For some reason, 13 is the one song on this album that so far I've completely forgotten about every time I listen to the album. That's really weird because it has an epic chorus with Kyo singing like it's the last day, a guitar solo that's short and sweet, and I can't say anything negative about it. Maybe it's because it kinda sounds like a bunch of the songs from The Insulated World thrown in a blender? Well, in any case, it's a really good song. It should be a stand-out track, but maybe it following The Perfume of Sins and being followed by 現、忘我を喰らう is why it's forgettable. I'm sure that after enough listens of the album, and especially the songs by themselves, I won't forget about it anymore.

In some ways 現、忘我を喰らう and 盲愛に処す are reminiscent of the band's early stuff, but I'm not entirely sure why I get that feeling. The riffs are catchy, borderline funky at parts, and both have some interesting vocals. There's a sense of frenzy and urgency in both songs, with erratic pulsation, like electric shocks or something. The fact that 落ちた事のある空 is between them does help them not blend together, but I'll admit these two songs still get mixed up in my head.

When it was released as a single, 落ちた事のある空 was the first Dir en grey release that was truly underwhelming to me; it is a good song with a great chorus, but it feels a bit formulaic. Clearly that isn't the case, as demonstrated by the rest of this album, but that's why it feels even more formulaic in the context of this album. It did grow on me as a single, but the album version is mixed differently... much worse. It's by far the most muffled, ironically because it even has a break made to sound like an old radio (if old radios were 100% bass instead of 100% treble); that would be a very effective buildup, if only the entire song wasn't so muffled... and on the single version, it is effective. The ending hits like a brick. On the album version, well... it doesn't.

On one hand 響 is a very dreamy song, but on the other hand it sounds triumphant. It's reminiscent of some of their previous lush songs like 濤声, Behind a Vacant Image and 赫, and also reminds me of Bottom of the Death Valley a little.

Eddie is fast and aggressive, with more than hints of punk encrusted in groovy metal. I'll probably commit heresy by saying this, but I unironically think a full-blown metalcore breakdown could've fit this song. I know that's not something Dir en grey do, but... I almost expected it the first time I heard this song. It sounds like a fistfight to the death in a back alley.

御伽 is breathtaking. It pushes on with the slow-burning force of a thousand suns, and has a truly gorgeous chorus. If it was any more epic, it would send every listener into a coma.

カムイ sounds like floating across the sky, falling down into the ocean, then floating again, and so on, until at some indeterminate point the floating turns into full-fledged flight. That's just as much because of its structure as some abstract "vibe", since it almost sounds like disjointed pieces put together with a very dry-sounding string motif thrown in to make it feel more coherent and unified, which get more unified as it progresses. On first listen, it was just confusing (and I guess it still is), but with each listen it gets more enjoyable; it might still be confusing, but it's the good kind of confusing.

Now, getting to the second CD of the limited edition...

I daydreamed about a heavier version of mazohyst of decadence for years, and was really excited when I found out they actually recorded one. It's one of those songs that always sends chills down my spine, right from the first note... or the original version does, at least. Maybe it's the added reverb, but the intro doesn't hit the same way. While I wish they had gone the route of "mazohyst of decadence given the full 蜜と唾 treatment", this is more like an abridged re-recording with some added heaviness, and that's not a bad thing. I can imagine it could actually detract from the impact of the song to make it sound too brutal, but I'll admit I almost expected "the full 蜜と唾 treatment" because of how this album sounds.

This version of ain't afraid to die is practically just a re-recording, without any major changes to the song. Imagine if they had done to this song what they did to 蜜と唾, 業, etc. That would've been hilarious! But I'm pretty sure it's a good thing they didn't, lol. I'm not entirely sure what the point of re-recording it is, but it's a great song, so... yeah. It does feel a bit empty without the choral backing vocals, though.

Enjoyability: 8/10
Relistenability: 9/10
Memorability: 8/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 7/10
Originality: 7/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: Dir en grey remain at the top, even if this album suffers from being too bottom-heavy.

In The Time Of Giants - Inheritance (2022)

Do giants experience time slower than humans, since they're bigger? I'd have never thought to think of that question if it wasn't for Benn Jordan's recent video about that subject (well, with animals, not giants, since, you know, giants don't exist) but after seeing that video, I couldn't help but think of it. Nothing to do with this album, but...

BANDCAMP

01. Crawk
02. Apatelepathy
03. Isosceles
04. Mr. Freeze
05. Inheritance
06. Rend
07. Somber
08. Dibbins
09. Slow Parable
10. Return
11. Spacewind
12. Reach For The Heavens
13. Digitalism
14. Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover)

With a name like "In The Time of Giants", an artist could make two kinds of music and it wouldn't feel like a misnomer: epic doom metal or emo pop punk/metalcore. This is neither, but it is pretty epic and it does have some emo vibes pop up from time to time, and it has a lot of catchy and sparkly-sounding stuff, so... actually, somehow this feels like exactly the kind of music that you'd expect In The Time Of Giants to sound like.

This is a very solid album, in that it's consistent but has enough variation to keep it fresh and engaging. This stuff is dripping with nostalgia for bands that dominated MTV; I could easily visualise most of the songs on this album having music videos shot at parking lots with burning bins/cars/band members, dirty public toilets and other locations like that (although the fact that most songs are instrumental lessens the intensity of that visualisation).

The absolute standout track to me is Rend with its groovy heavy riffage and burning intensity, while Dibbins is a song that more or less cycles through every vibe present on this album.

The vocals make me think of a greasy alcoholic with messy hair and a scrawny goatee sitting on a porch in an off-white tank top with questionable stains who's seen it all, having flashbacks to whatever horrors he has witnessed. You might think that sounds like an insult, but I don't mean it like that; if anything, it really hammers home the feeling of this album as something reminiscent of harder times of the past. On the other hand, the electronic elements give it a modern touch, a hint of a future where we live in a technological utopia; it can't be a dystopia with all the hopeful melodies that permeate the album, can it? They do get melancholic, too, though...

Personally, I feel like a lot of the instrumental songs would be better and more memorable with vocals, because they tend to sound like they'd have space for vocals and to my ears that leaves them sounding somewhat incomplete. However, this is of course entirely subjective, and I'll admit I'm heavily biased in favour of music that has vocals, with only rare exceptions.

I'd say this album encapsulates a feeling of a late night where you're not sure what the future holds, feeling conflicted over fears and hopes. That vibe is wrapped up with the last song, a cover of a song I'd forgotten exists and never knew who it was originally by. This rendition of it, at least in the context of this album, somehow sounds to me like a last plea for confirmation that the future will be a utopia and not a cyberpunk dystopia.

Enjoyability: 7/10
Relistenability: 7/10
Memorability: 6/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 9/10
Originality: 6/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: If prog metal/rock would be your favourite thing if only it didn't have so much proggery, this will be your favourite album.

Slow Crone - Enough (2022)

If you told me this was an obscure EP made by a psychedelic rock supergroup in the sixties or an industrial goth rock supergroup in the nineties, I don't think I'd even question it. If you told me it's the debut EP of a solo artist in the 2020's, I might be sceptical at first. But that's what it is.

BANDCAMP

01. Wide Enough

02. Wanted

03. Hey Man

04. What's It

It's hard to describe what this sounds like. I could make a whole bunch of comparisons to a wide range of artists, like "this is what might happen if you locked Patti Smith, Dax Riggs and the ghosts of Kurt Cobain and Lou Reed in a studio and told them they won't get out until they make a great record together", but it'd feel kinda cheap to say that. Besides, if you were to lock Patti Smith, Dax Riggs and the ghosts of Kurt Cobain and Lou Reed in a studio together, I don't imagine they'd accomplish much since two of the artists in the equation would only be there in spirit (ba dum tss?). Or maybe they'd come up with a masterpiece, but it's not really relevant to this EP. I just wanted to think of an interesting comparison, then say the comparison doesn't make sense, and that's what I thought of, OK?

Actually, maybe it's pretty easy to describe what this sounds like: psychedelic churnings from an endless ocean. It's timeless in that it doesn't sound exactly like anything else, but at the same time it sounds like a perfectly logical consummation of all the wild ass rock made since the sixties ([wild ass] rock, not wild [ass rock]; this isn't ass rock). Other artists may be doing similar things, but usually it comes across as a conscious effort to emulate a fusion of timeless classics; this, on the other hand, has a very organic feeling throughout.

The first track sounds like what the soundtrack to the film Moxie should've been like, if only that film hadn't pandered to mainstream zoomer sensibilities. It's a very groovy and oddly catchy song bursting with primal "fuck you" energy, a perfect opening to wake your ears up to what they're about to ingest.

The second and third tracks are more of the same, as in consistent quality but nothing you wouldn't expect. They stand on their own, but in the big picture they honestly kinda blend in and it's possible to just zone out while listening.

The last track, though, is where things get kicked up a notch. Everything gets out of control. It's like being woken up by having boiling water thrown at your face, and then having to take part in a fist fight to the death while your face is melting. Yet, as awful as that sounds, the song kicks ass... as if that wasn't obvious from that hypothetical event being described in the context of this type of music. But still, that song does reach levels of ear abuse that might border on uncomfortable... which is undeniably great, considering it's the last track and guarantees that this EP is unforgettable.

Enjoyability: 9/10
Relistenability: 8/10
Memorability: 7/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 8/10
Originality: 6/10
Epicness: 6/10
Nutshell: Enough said! Get it? Because the EP is called Enough. Sorry, I had to...

Jared Spry - Quick Save (2022)

As hard as it is to believe, there are people in the world who don't like sax. The reason I mention their existence is that those people probably won't like Jared (or at least his music), because SAX GALORE.

BANDCAMP

01. Roll Initiative

02. Sand in My Left Shoe

03. Streets Ahead

04. Daydreams

05. Bridge Out

This entire EP has a nice nostalgic vibe. Listening to it, it's like being transported back into childhood, when life was all about playing comfy video games indoors (think Croc, Digimon World 2003 and Grandia) and walking outside in the summer when it was still possible to see butterflies, bees and whatnot all the time.

Roll Initiative is an interesting choice as the first track, because it's the most energetic. It's like you're pulled straight into a boss battle in one of those comfy games you used to play as a kid, and by the time you realise what's happening, you're already celebrating victory with a group of cute anthropomorphic animals; victory celebration is what Sand in My Left Shoe feels like to me, but at the same time it feels like journeying to an unknown destination, where everything is possible. That childlike wonder is blooming, and by the time you get to Streets Ahead, which is like an epic adventure through various fantastic landscapes populated by swarms of enemies (whatever those enemies may be), you're fully energised.

To me, Daydreams may be the best song on the EP. I mean, they're all good and full of epic saxophonising, but this song, with the long chill intro devoid of sax, feels like it takes you from passively floating through clouds on a bright blue sky to actively flying a sky ship of some kind when the sax comes in. It's like an entire adventure in itself, the theme song to a comfy game you would've wanted to play as a kid but couldn't because you were no longer a kid when it came out.

The last song, Bridge Out, is like being gradually transported back to the real world, to the current year, when everything is going to hell. It's a soft landing, like, "hey, you remember how things actually are? don't get carried away by imagination" and slowly but surely you're brought back to a life that isn't what it used to be.

If there's one criticism I could point out, it's that the sax gets a bit overpowering in the mix. I know saying that about music that's obviously intended to be very sax-driven may be a hot take, but there are moments when everything else is basically drowned out. There'd be more punch, especially in the last track, if the drums were louder. Of course, the effect of the music as a whole would be different if it was mixed differently, and it's possible the "childlike wonder" would be lost or at least diminished. I'm not really sure.

Not really a criticism, but as a whole it also isn't the most "striking" in any way. That may in part be because I don't listen to much music that has saxophone in it, but to me this EP feels like it's often "missing" something but I can't even imagine what that could be. Like, it's not variety, and it's not more instruments, and it's not vocals; I just don't know what it is. It also doesn't feel very original, even though at the same time it feels very unique; I can't really explain what I mean, but the point is that it's great as it is, but I have a feeling like it could be better. Maybe it's just that it's an EP and not an album. Dunno.

In any case, this is a solid EP that everyone who likes saxophone should give a chance.

Enjoyability: 9/10

Relistenability: 8/10

Memorability: 7/10

Coherence: 7/10

Flow: 8/10

Originality: 7/10

Epicness: 7/10

Nutshell: Let Jared Spry fry your ears with red-hot sax!